⛔️ DEPRECATED: The capabilities of this project is migrated into Genv. Rntop is no longer supported, please consider using Genv instead.

A top-like tool for monitoring GPUs across a cluster.

rntop can save information to an output file. Afterwards, you can go to Board for rntop, load this file and see an analysis of the information recorded by rntop over time like GPU utilization across the cluster and more.

Running runtop is possible with Docker.

In the future there will be native installations for Linux distributions.

rntop uses SSH connections for monitoring the remote GPU machines. Therefore, it is necessary that you will have SSH access to all machines you want to monitor.

Connecting with password is not supported at the moment so set up your SSH configuration to work with SSH keys if needed.

You can verify the SSH connection to a GPU machine by running ssh user@server nvidia-smi

Run rntop using the following command and place the machine hostnames or IPs instead of the ... placeholder:

docker run -it --rm -v $HOME/.ssh:/root/.ssh runai/rntop ...

It is possible to specify a username for the connections.

If you are using the same username for all machines pass it as the argument --username. If you are using different usernames for different machines you can pass them as part of the hostname (e.g. john@server).

Note that we mount the SSH directory from the host to the container so that it would be able to use the SSH configuration file and keys to establish the SSH connections.

If you are using local execution, make sure that the container is accessisble to GPUs by adding --gpus all to the docker run command.

rntop can save metrics to a file.

You can then open this with Board for rntop to visualize the exported information such as cluster utilization and memory usage.

This is possible by specifying a path with the argument --output. rntop would create the file if it does not already exist and append to it if it exists because of previous runs.

Make sure the file is accessible from the host so that you will be able to upload it easily.

You can use the following command and replace the ... placeholder with the machine hostnames or IPs:

docker run -it --rm -v $HOME/.ssh:/root/.ssh -v $HOME/.rntop:/host runai/rntop --output /host/rntop.log ...

When saving information to an output file, one might want to run rntop for long periods of time, like days and even weeks. To do so, rntop should not be attached to a specific terminal session, so that it would continue running when the session exits.

We recommend to use tmux for this.

Make sure you are running on a machine that would not shutdown, restart or hybernate. A personal laptop is not a good choice.

Here is an example of how to use tmux for running rntop in the background:

1. Create a new tmux session and name it rntop with the command:

tmux new -s rntop

2. Run rntop and save an output file.

Make sure you save the output file to a directory that is accessible from the host.

3. You can detach from the session with Ctrl-b + d
4. Then reattach after some time with the command:

tmux attach-session -t rntop

Here are some examples of commands (... is used for simplification):

1. docker run ... runai/rntop john@192.168.1.60
2. docker run ... runai/rntop --username john 192.168.1.60 192.168.1.61 rob@192.168.1.62

Pass --help to see all the available arguments.

Looking for a place to discuss best practices, discover new tools, and exchange ideas about how to make the most out of our GPUs without losing time? Join the Discord server with the creators of Genv and rntop - start building your models faster!

• Installation and setup support as well as best practice tips and tricks directly for your use-case
• Discuss possible features
• Monthly Beers with Engineers sessions with industry experts
• Networking events
• and many more...

If you are having trouble running with local execution, try adding --entrypoint bash to the docker run command and then execute nvidia-smi.

The next steps should guide you in how to troubleshoot rntop in case it fails connecting to some machine. For the sake of the explanation let's assume you are using the credentials user@machine.

First, verify that the credentials are correct by running the following command:

ssh user@machine nvidia-smi

If this does not work then the credentials that you are using might be wrong or you don't have a proper SSH key to connect using these credentials.

If this works it means that the credentials are correct and for some reason it's either the container that can't connect to the machine or it's the rntop application itself.

Let's check if we pass all the SSH keys and configuration correctly to the container by running the following command:

docker run -it --rm -v $HOME/.ssh:/root/.ssh --entrypoint bash runai/rntop -c "ssh user@machine nvidia-smi"

If this does not work then you might be using an SSH agent or macOS Keychain. Try adding one of the following to the rntop command depending on the OS of your machine:

• Linux: -v $SSH_AUTH_SOCK:$SSH_AUTH_SOCK -e SSH_AUTH_SOCK=$SSH_AUTH_SOCK
• macOS: -v /run/host-services/ssh-auth.sock:/ssh-agent -e SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/ssh-agent

If the command above did work then it means that the container can connect to the machine and it's the rntop application itself that can't.

rntop uses libssh for the SSH connections by default. There is some chance that this library does not support your setup. Therefore, try using the native ssh executable as a communication agent by passing the argument --ssh to the rntop command.

Please open a GitHub issue in case you encounter a bug. To help us in fixing the issue please describe the scenario well and provide any needed information.

docker build -f devel.Dockerfile -t runai/rntop:devel .

docker run -it --rm -v $PWD:/rntop -w /rntop -v $HOME/.ssh:/root/.ssh runai/rntop:devel

Add -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock if you also want to build Docker images

bazel build //...

cpplint --recursive .

bazel run :rntop

Pass arguments is possible with using -- as a delimeter; e.g. bazel run :rntop -- --help

First of all build the application; it's recommended to build with optimizations with the command:

bazel build :rntop -c opt

Now build the Docker image itself with the command:

docker build -f Dockerfile -t runai/rntop:beta bazel-bin

• Set up SSH to work without password: https://superuser.com/a/8110